Halloween...and a true ghost story

Do I believe in ghosts? I have had some deeply strange encounters, and met enough perfectly sensible people who have told me their stories, and have had no reason to doubt their common sense, and the validity of their account.

What is a ghost? We all know what we’re talking about- to a point. Here is the dictionary definition:

“Now chiefly, an apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous image and attempting to right a wrong done in life; this sense of the word is recorded from late Middle English.

The word is recorded from Old English (in form gāst) in the sense ‘spirit, soul’, and is of Germanic origin; the gh- spelling occurs first in Caxton, and was probably influenced by Flemish gheest”. – Source

But the question still remains, what is a ghost, really? Are they sentient? Do they know they are there? Do they have intent? Or are they some kind of an echo? Do they know who they are- or were? Do they know who we are? What do they want?

I recommend reading up about the Cambridge archaeologist and paranormal researcher Tom Lethbridge T.C. Lethbridge

Some years ago, my phone rang one Saturday night, about 8 PM. It was a lady calling from Preston, about ten miles away from where I live. She had found my number in the psychic pages of the online telephone directory, and she wanted a psychic medium.

Note. I have never advertised as a psychic medium, but there is no separate listing for Tarot, and tarot readers are frequently listed under that same heading, along with astrologers and clairvoyants.

This lady was calling to ask me to come over to her house. Right now. There was ‘something’ in the hallway and it was blocking the stairs. She, her partner and the children were huddled in the sitting room, too terrified to leave the room.

I could not go in person, sadly. Nor do I advertise such a service. But there are others who do. I gave her the name and telephone number of a local lady, a psychic medium who specialized in clearing ‘haunted houses.’

I didn’t know her but she had positive reviews, and meantime, such was her distress, I didn’t wish to turn this lady away and I reached for my cards, asking the lady what exactly had happened?

Her youngest child had been upstairs, she told me, when an invisible lady started whispering in her ear. The child panicked. Then her siblings panicked. Then the mother panicked too, and so did her partner. Now they were huddled together in the sitting room and there was something outside the sitting room door; a cold spot, a moving shadow and it was guarding the stairs.

I asked, what had this invisible lady said to the little girl?

The caller said, the ghost told her youngest child, her hair was very pretty.

I was looking through my cards while we were talking. This figured. The cards confirmed a benign presence – or influence. A grandmother?

The cards also indicated the lady on the other end of the phone had been under a lot of strain. I asked about this, and she confirmed a prolonged period of acute financial and other worries. Her mother had died three years earlier, and she was still missing her, really quite badly. But, she said, the littlest child was too young to remember her grandmother. Why, the lady wondered, if the ghost was her mother, had her mother not talked to her, but instead to the child, she had never known in life?

It was because the little girl happened in that moment to be the one tuned in on the ‘right’ wavelength to receive such an incoming message. The little girl had ESP in other words, and was hyper sensitive to atmosphere. This was why she alone had heard it. If there was a ghost, if the grandmother was still around, then she was tuning in to the living, seeking to deliver comfort to the mother who was her child.

The little grand-daughter was the most receptive conduit.

First things first. The lady had called to ask for help. I had given her the number of a reputable medium but she needed support right now, and help to restore order in the household.

To do this she needed to assert herself and reclaim her territory, ‘psych it out’, and show the children it was safe to go anywhere in the house.

The living can talk to a ghost, or say boo, just as it can say boo to us.There was no nastiness in these cards. If there had been, then the living can use aggression too. And tell the presence to GET GONE.

I have twice had occasion to do so myself, and it worked.

Photo by Mads Schmidt Rasmussen on Unsplash

This presence was not nasty. Or at least the original one was not. But it was not wanted. I suggested that she tell the family, ‘it’s all gone now’, open that sitting room door, go straight down that hallway, alone if need be, put the kettle on, serve up something for supper. Light, movement and noise will shatter such a spell, and fear is contagious and feeds upon itself.

I later heard directly from the medium whose number I had given the lady. The lady gave her my number. The medium and her team had gone to the lady’s house next day, taking with them an array of electronic equipment. The medium confirmed there was an old lady’s ghost in the house, that it was the grandmother, and that the mother’s state of stress had called the ghost forth. The ghost had behaved in character, affectionately, but since the child had been startled, and then the mother had reacted with fear, everyone became frightened, and the thing took on an unpleasant aspect. The medium said that now the mother was consciously aware of it, the house should stay quiet now.

No suggestion of judgement attaches to the lady’s handling of the situation by the way. None whatsoever. Fear was and is a natural reaction to such an inexplicable experience. But if it happened again, now that she had some kind of explanation, however questionable, and reassurance that it was not malevolent, she could choose a more controlled and matter of fact response, whilst not dismissing the child’s experience.

“The Mind has many corridors” – Emily Dickinson

Psychic author Cassandra Eason has written a book with advice for parents with psychic children available from a range of second hand book sellers online.

https://cassandraeason.com/https://cassandraeason.com/

From my point of view, since I had never spoken with this lady medium myself before her visit to the house, but had simply provided contact details, I was interested that my tarot cards and this lady, this psychic medium, had detected virtually identical stories.

The power of the physical, the element of Earth, is the power of the living moment, here and now. We are exalted in the Earth. We take in air. We take up space.

From The Gilded Tarot

This time is ours. Our inheritance of Earth. Our ace card in otherworldly dealings, the Ace of Pentacles. A nice cup of tea? How about a biccie? Feed the cat. Take the dog a walk. Take it to the cemetery.

It’s nice in there.

Photo by Micael Widell on Pexels.com

ALL SOULS

The transient day dies silently, and at its edge,

four grey hounds hunt for signs among the graves,

snuffling in the leaves, they lift their legs

on dead bouquets in faded wreaths.

A wind sprite sneaks round urns and angels,

and whisks the skirt of a woman kneeling

with a basket beside a new earth mound.

Two small children crouch behind.

Lights come on as dusk draws in,

and the woman with her kids drifts away

with the mist, all grey, sky as one,

into the Hesperian town.

The hounds stay running among the stones,

backs bridged over their skittering bones.

Circling together they lift their heads

and howl for the souls of their ancestral dead;

hunters, and all the prey that gave up the ghost

dying together in the close embracing hills.

They know who they are calling; The Host,

All Souls, rising from the earth like smoke.

Torches have blazed with saxophone and drum.

Masked revellers with candles in the town

finally sleep. And, under the windy moon,

the graveyard walks.

-Margaret Whyte

RIP my darling mother, Mam, who wrote this poem (23 December 1939- 27 February 2023)

I saw my mother’s ghost just once, the day after she died in her own bedroom at home, released from hospital on end of life care. A movement caught my eye and there it was, a faint cloud, a movement on the turn of the stairs.

But she did not linger long. I was on my way to the kitchen one morning ten days later when I “saw” her, out and through “the valley. She was standing, smiling up at some hills the other side. A child of the Pennines always. I reckon she found the right heaven. She didn’t look at me. I saw her face only briefly in profile.

Life is for living. But we don’t know it all. Time is not linear. There is much wisdom in superstition, and we give thanks this All Souls season and every day, for our precious time with those we have loved, who have gone on before us.